The most common owl species here in Sullivan County is the Eastern Screech Owl. They are a small owl, with adults being roughly six and a half to ten inches tall and weighing between four and eight ounces. The females are larger than the males.

There are two basic colors of Eastern Screech Owls, called the grey morph and the rufous morph (rufous meaning reddish). Their taxonomy is called “muddled” by the wildlife biologists. The color morphs interbreed and cause a variation in colors in the field, including browns.

First formally classified in 1758 by Carl Linnaeus, it is one of some 22 different species of screech owls. There are actually five different subspecies of just the Eastern Screech Owl itself.

Eastern Screech Owls reside in varied woodlands (both coniferous and deciduous). They can easily adapt to suburban and urban environments which is why they are so common. Unlike some of the other owls, which occasionally come out in the day, they are strictly nocturnal.

These owls often accept nest boxes, so put one up if you would like to try to attract a breeding pair. Make sure to put a guard on the box to keep out predators. Eastern Screech Owls will use birdbaths to drink and bathe near houses (don’t forget that they will only use them at night).

Like other owls, they regurgitate pellets containing feathers, fur and bones from their prey after digestion. Look for spots on the ground under trees that are littered with these pellets in order to locate nesting sites in the wild. If you locate a nest, please leave them be and observe from a distance.

Here in the East, about a third of the Eastern Screech Owls are rufous and two-thirds are grey. Despite being smaller, the males have deeper voices. The oldest recorded Eastern Screech Owl was at least 14 and a half, having been banded in 1955 and found live in 1968 in Canada.

Eastern Screech owls generally mate for life and are monogamous. However, if a male chooses to mate with two females, the second female will often chase the first one off the nest and after laying her own eggs will raise both sets of eggs as her own. That’s a somewhat abnormal behavior among birds.

Here’s a fun fact to close out this column. Eastern Screech Owls regularly eat European Starlings. Despite that fact, European Starlings frequently chase the owls off their nests and steal them to raise their own brood of baby Starlings.

Let’s all enjoy the outdoors!

John S. Van etten is the current president of the Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs of Sullivan County, Inc.